The heroine of Mario O'Hara's Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos (NV Productions, 1976) is a creature of contradictory attributes that isn't easy to imagine in the flesh. Rosario would seem too oversized to be embodied by any actress, even by an actress of extraordinary resourcefulness and versatility. Nora Aunor has already established herself as a performer of that caliber, but nothing in her earlier work fully anticipated Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos. Aunor accomplishes the near-impossible, presenting Rosario in believably human terms. In a role affording every opportunity for overstatement, she offers a performance of such measured intensity that the results are by turns exhilarating and heartbreaking. There is hardly an emotion that Aunor doesn't touch in this movie and yet we're never aware of her straining. This is one of the most astonishing and yet one of the most unaffected and natural performances I can imagine. Conrado Baltazar photographs Aunor excellently. To begin with, she looks more translucently beautiful than ever and what Aunor has wrought, with O'Hara's help, is a psychological verity for Rosario that she reveals through patterns of motion. She seems to be shunning the close scrutiny of others. Yes, she often faces people, often embraces, converses with them, but the overall impression of her movement is sidling, gently attempting to hide herself in open space. Through this kinetic concept, Aunor gives Rosario an aura of concealment. Sometimes O'Hara hands the picture over to Aunor. The camera fixes on her in medium close-up and virtually without any change of shot, she tells a story. It’s what Ingmar Bergman has done a number of times with Liv Ullmann and it’s been done before with Aunor.
Presented in an aspect ratio of 1.33:1 and granted a 1080p transfer, Mario O'Hara's Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos was restored in 2016 by L'Immagine Ritrovata in Italy and the digital transfer was created from the surviving 35mm print deposited at the Cultural Center of the Philippines. I find the new appearance of the film unconvincing. There is an entire range of color values that effectively destabilizes the film's native dynamic range and in many cases even collapses existing detail. Plenty of the darker/indoor footage convey very specific digital flatness that gives the film a distracting artificial quality. Grain exposure is unrealistic although I have to make it clear that without the anomalies described above the visuals would have been quite wonderful. Image stability is very good. Debris, cuts, damage marks, stains and other standard age-related imperfections have been carefully removed. There is only one standard audio track on this release, Tagalog LPCM 2.0 with optional English subtitles for the main feature. Excluding one short segment where a light echo effect appears during the exchanges, clarity and stability are otherwise excellent. The music is nicely balanced as well. Dynamic intensity is limited, but given the organic nature of the original sound design this should not be surprising. Tatlong Taong Walang Diyos is so perfectly cast. A fine, absorbing and wonderfully acted movie about three people who flounder in the bewilderment of being human in an age of madness. Watching it is quite an experience.
Art Director: Vicente Bonus
Film Editors: Ike Jarlego, Jr., Efren Jarlego
Director of Photography: Conrado Baltazar, F.S.C.
Music By: Minda D. Azarcon
Written and Directed By; Mario O'Hara
